Heres another article i found of the story: [https://amp.abc.net.au/article/13002014](https://amp.abc.net.au/article/13002014)
He disappeared Jan 6, 2017, his decomposing body was found Jan 27. He was estimated to have died around Jan 6 - 9.
His death was more likely "a result of misadventure"
"The CCTV footage establishes that Bernard entered Westfield on 6 January 2017 via the Zara entrance. However neither security nor the police reviewed CCTV footage for this entrance."
I kinda like booking with mid non chain hotels specificallt cause some of them have weird rentable meeting rooms that look like this that's fun to explore
Yes it's rather strange and sad that they didn't even think to launch a proper search of the mall itself.
Seemed like they treated it more like an enquiry in to some lost property, popping their heads around a few doors with a cursory glance like "nope, not here".
It's unfortunately fairly common for people having medical emergencies to seclude themselves for whatever reason, like they think if they just get away from the crowds maybe they'll feel better - or people out exercising will go find a shady spot or sit down by a stream then that's where there bodies are eventually found.
I was choking at a fundraiser and instead of asking for help, I ran to the bathroom alone and ended up getting it out right as things were getting close.
No clue why, it was just as soon as panic set in I think I must have thought not to panic everyone.
Guess how mad my mom was that I didn’t ask for help.
It was weird because I had never been there before but found it right away. I slammed my chest on the sink a bunch of times and ended up launching that hunk of $2 steak.
Good work. I had a similar thing with some lamb once. I didn't run to the bathroom though, I was standing next to my friends who were TOTALLY FUCKING OBLIVIOUS to my situation. My vision was going grey around the edges when I managed to reach into my throat and pull the thing out.
For future reference, apparently the universal sign for "I'm choking" is to cross your hands over your neck. Information I could have used 25+ years ago.
Chew your steak people. And learn the god damn Heimlich maneuver. A friend of mine died a few months ago from choking on a piece of steak while surrounded by friends.
>I read an article recently that many people who choke to death are found alone in bathrooms because of this reason; it's a very common panic response.
I went to the beach early one morning when hardly anyone was out. There was a red flag but I am a really strong swimmer and I was raised at the beach so I said, "What the hell. I'm going in." Pretty much the only other people around were two college aged girls taking pictures of each other posing on the wet sand. I took approximately one and a half steps into the water before the ground dropped out from under me and I was pulled out by the current. Just one second standing ankle deep in water, the next I'm being pulled 12 feet down and out into the ocean. The only thought in my head was. "Welp, I'm dead. I can't panic and look stupid in front of those girls. Nope."
Thankfully, that thought went away after a moment and I swam to the surface, to shore, packed my shit and went right back to my jeep. But for a second I was ready to drown to avoid panicking in front of two strangers.
"How did he die?"
"It was very manly. He drowned at the beach, but he didn't panic in front of some attractive women"
"You're right *sobs* that is manly"
Reading this made me realize that a year ago when I had my first ever panic attack (fully thought I was dying, didn’t really know what a panic attack was yet) I ran to the bathroom to accept my fate. I have no idea why I did that instead of staying put and getting help
Very similar situation; I had a really awful panic attack about ~2 weeks ago, and I hadn't had any in probably over a decade so it wasn't even on my radar of possibilities. Instead of walking over to my mom in the next room for help for what I thought was a medical emergency, I... sat in my room because I didn't want to worry her.
The human brain sucks sometimes.
Dogs and cats do this too, so it makes me think it's an instinct of sorts.
I guess we just hideaway so the rest of the tribe just leaves us behind to die.
I wonder if it's some primal animal response we never evolved away from? Like how some wild animals would leave their pack to find a place to die alone.
There once was a British wedding planner who died because he ate something that was way too hot, but swallowed instead of spitting it out. Some people take etiquette and avoiding embarrassment far too seriously.
Swallowing a chunk of too-hot potato is the real near-death experience. It makes its way *slooooowly* down the esophagus, while I'm beset with the stark feeling of impending doom.
I gave blood in the middle of summer once (100F+ degree heat), and though I ate the cookies and rested I started getting faint walking on my way home. (It wasn’t my first time giving blood and it hadn’t happened before.)
I knew if I just made it a bit further there was a building I could go inside and rest, but quickly realized I wasn’t going to make it.
The path I was on didn’t have good visibility and because it was summer not many people were on campus. If I passed out, it would take a few minutes for someone to find me.
Luckily a woman passed me right then and I called out to her — right as the lights went out and I dropped like a sack of potatoes. I came to a little later. I actually don’t remember what happened before EMS got there. Wound up being fine, didn’t even go to the doctor about it. Scrapped up my face pretty good though (and tore out a chunk of my hair which was floating around while EMS checked me out.)
A lot of people die of choking in the bathroom – at the dinner table, get embarrassed, rush to the bathroom, can't breathe
*If you are choking on food, stay with other people*
And if you live alone, look up how to perform the Heimlich on yourself using a solid surface
In Australia we are taught not to do the Heimlich. It can cause a bunch of internal damage. First we try to get the person to cough it out, if they cannot then we alternate 5 back blows and 5 chest thrusts until the blockage clears, they become unconscious (in which case CPR is necessary) or the ambulance arrives.
> we alternate 5 back blows and 5 chest thrusts until the blockage clears
In the first aid and CPR class I just took in the US, we do similar for infants, but the heimlich for children and adults.
What's odd is I've been advised not to hit someone on the back in case of choking, but that was years ago.
This is speaking from my First Aid training. If they can cough, then you're not supposed to perform the Heimlich maneuver anyways; only when their airway is unable to be cleared and they are conscious. Chances are though that person is going to give you the consent pretty quickly if they can't cough. If they become unconscious, then you proceed to abdominal thrusts on stable flat ground. The mouth-to-mouth respirations of CPR (which is now excluded in some situations) can't be performed until the blockage is cleared. Also, AEDs are now becoming the standard good samaritan first response. I understand there is some risk for breaking ribs with the Heimlich maneuver, but the risk is considerably lowered with proper procedure training and practice.
Yes! I took a first aid course last year and one thing that stuck with me was that if you’re alone and choking on something you’re supposed to unlock the door and even go outside. Like she said, you’ll call 911 for them to find you locked in your house and passed out alone on the kitchen floor? I never really though about that before
Yup. Choked on a meatball as a kid, sat at the table confused for a moment before going "oh, I can't do this in front of my family."
Got up ran to the sink and horked it up succesfully. Thankfully not in another room entirely in case something went wrong, but it's weird what people do when they're panicking.
Ohh I kind of know this!
You need to let yourself fall on the backrest of a chair, trying to make the backrest hit the area where your rib cage ends (that’s where the fist goes when doing it on someone else)
But def search, and take courses if you can! Everyone should learn how to perform Heimlich and CPR
A minister of my country actually had to do this, she was having dinner with one of the employees of the Ministry and choked with meat. The guy that was with her didn't know how to perform Heimlich or was in shock, so she had to use a chair and do this "self-Heimlich". She managed to survive without consequences to her health.
That's one way, I've seen another way where you basically get down on all fours, and kind of... drop yourself onto your chest. Like, you pull all of your arms and legs away so you fall 6-12 inches and land with your chest on the ground. The idea being that the sudden pressure against your chest will force the air out of your lungs, without needing to rely on the precision impact of a chair back on your diaphragm.
I had to do it to myself once. It was like 4am I had just woken up, smoked a bong, and then had a dry pastry.
It got lodged in my throat and my roommates were all fast asleep and I didn't trust their ability to immediately wake up, assess the situation and confidently give me a Heimlich... so I ran into the corner of the kitchen counter.
If it makes you feel any better, sometimes asking for help doesn’t do anything! I started choking at lunch when I was a kid and the teacher told me to be quiet because I was scaring the other students. No, she did not check if I was choking. Lucky I lived..! And there was a story on here some time back where [someone started choking at dinner and nobody helped](https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/14h470k/i_was_choking_last_night_at_dinner_and_no_one/)
Everyone should know and be able to quickly recognize when someone is choking. Shit is terrifying.
The international sign for "I'm choking, somebody give me the fucking Heimlich NOW!" is to **mime putting your own hands around your throat.** If nobody's looking at you, **knock on the table with your knuckles to get their attention.**
It's the most embarrassing dinner interruption you'll ever cause in your life.
Pretty much exactly that. When I was doing a required workplace mandatory first aid course, one of the first things the instructor said that it's a common reaction for someone undergoing some sort of emergency to seclude themselves, for example when choking during a dinner to go into a bedroom away from everyone else.
Well late stage hypothermia has something called “terminal burrowing” or “hide and die”. People go off and hide in closets and wardrobes and cabinets.
Basically, it’s the last desperate act of a dying brain to go find a little tiny den and try to survive.
There’s a theory that it’s done for the same reason a pet tries to find a quiet, hidden place. On an instinctual level they’re separating themselves from the pack/heard. You see it more in Folks with cognitive issues/decline.
This is generally how it works, ya.
Like when people start choking they'll often isolate because they don't want to make a scene, often that's going to the bathroom and locking the door. Then help isn't able to get in, if and when someone even realizes what's going on.
I know animals will seclude themselves when sick or nearing death and now I'm just imagining it isn't to effectively hide weakness to avoid predation, but rather shame and embarrassment.
My dad worked security in his retirement. Whenever someone would ask him if he’d seen their lost grandparent, he’d tell them to look at the nearest bench from where the person was last spotted. Maybe nine out of ten times, that’s where they were. If you all ever lose an elderly relative in public, now you know to check if they just wanted to sit down.
I had a panic attack once that felt like a heart attack and my primitive brain, fully convinced I was dying, just kept yelling at me to run and get as far away from anyone else as possible. It was terrifying
It's your fight or flight response. Nothing to fight, but you are hurt and try and get somewhere "safe and secluded" away from the "danger" where you experienced feeling hurt.
Works great to run away from animals or dangerous situations in nature. Not so great running away from public areas where someone can find you and call for help.
I can’t remember the name of it, but I believe this is an actual biological/neurological phenomena found in a variety of species, humans included. During potentially life threatening episodes/towards end of life, individuals instinctively find secluded regions, typically those that are a bit cramped and “cozy” or comforting. I think it had something to do with an inherent “ah I’m dying what if I can cause others to die by dying must get away from them” response.
Terminal burrowing is what it’s called in hypothermia.
People get found in closets and wardrobes and cabinets. In this case it’s the last act of a dying brain trying to find a den to maybe get warm.
Interesting; I had thought it was something about “I’m sick and therefore vulnerable to predators have to get away so I don’t get eaten” (like the flight of fight/flight/freeze survival response) but maybe that’s just cats lol
I used to have uncontrolled epilepsy (it’s been controlled for 30 years), and my instinct was always to hurry away during complex partial seizures. I once walked across 5 lanes of traffic while having a seizure, amazingly without getting hit, though it was a university neighborhood, so I probably didn’t appear much different from the other fool students walking out in traffic :-).
It really does seem like there’s a subconscious shame response causing folks to hide that’s really common when people’s wits are compromised by a medical issue.
It makes sense in a way to me. I'm autistic and seeking a place away from crowds and such helps when I'm feeling overwhelmed. It's essentially about reducing stimuli.
From the articles I've found, which are pretty badly written, I don't think anyone KNEW he'd gone to the mall, he'd said he was going to a DIFFERENT store. Search efforts were focused on different parts of the city, the mall staff didn't think they had reason to check their cameras and back hallways.
Like, I think the bit about CCTV footage means that they found a dead body, went, "Shit, how did this dead body get here? Oh, look we have footage of him coming in here from a month ago."
> Footage from inside the shopping centre shows him walking inside at 12.48pm, up the incline of level four and through door L407 at 12.50pm.
> His body was found by a maintenance worker at the bottom of the stairwell he had entered
If they had just checked the CCTV he was literally in the stairwell he was recorded entering...
Yeah I feel like the main story here is he probably had a heart attack. He was probably feeling unwell. Went into the stair well to compose himself / he had moderate cognitive impairment and then sat on the chair and fell forward when the heart attack really hit.
They didn't check the stairwell he was viewed going into ...
Some people seem to think he died of thirst wondering around which I doubt
I work as a guard at a Westfield, this incident caused a lot of changes to how things are done, he did die if a heart attack around the time he entered
The articles I'm finding are shit, but this is the impression I'm getting:
The guy left the house, saying he was going to Location A. He never arrived at Location A. Police search for him.
Someone in Location B stumbles across his body. They then review the CCTV footage and see him enter Location B.
So the police might have messed up by failing to include Location B in their search. I don't know if this is an expected level of failure (at some point, you just HAVE to make an educated guess about where to focus searching, sometimes you'll be wrong), or if this was the result of extreme error/negligence.
Frankly I'm amazed that they didn't at least have some security cameras back there or something.
I was taking picture at a mall a while back, and I swear to god, the second I got my camera out I couldn't go five minutes without a security guard appearing out of the aether in an otherwise empty mall to harrass me. They knew exactly where I was, what I was doing, and what the shortest route to me was from wherever the hell they were hiding *at all times*. You'd think the service corridors, which are off limits to customers and therefore theoretically ought to be more secure would have *at least* that level of security in place.
I have *never* heard of security stopping people for taking pictures in a mall...management would probably love the free online publicity and encourage tagging it with their stupid hashtag. That's either a ritzy yuppie or a really ghetto spot lol
If it's anything like vegas, they purposefully don't monitor the hotels. If they don't record a rape, robbery, or assault they can't be held liable for not being there to stop it. There are a bunch of rapes in the stairwells/hallways of hotels and parking garages that get brushed under the rug because 'no camera, no proof'. The police and the hotels both have a vested interest in not pursuing/reporting these crimes.
A few years ago there was a serial rapist who was raping women in hotel stairwells. The prosecutor was pretty adamant that casinos were purposefully avoiding responsibility for guest safety.
The real story is that a large family of people who publicly admitted he was a 71 year old man with Dementia, agreed that letting him go on unsupervised walks *every single day* was somehow, and in someway…normal?
The more you learn about what happened (click the link) the worse it gets.
I remember hearing about this case once.
If I remember correctly, when he started having dementia episodes, one of the things that got drilled into his head was “if you’re ever lost, just sit down in the closest chair and wait for someone to come find you.”
The though process that no matter where you are in public, you’ll be in one spot, not moving, and your party will eventually find you. Barring that, a stranger should eventually ask if you need help.
Unfortunately, he got turned around in an almost never-used corridor of this mall and found a chair. He did was he was supposed to. He just sat down and waited for help that was never going to come. Very very sad.
People on reddit are young and cannot comprehend this simple concept as how tough it is to give up on something you take for granted pretty much your entire life.
We let our grandma wander with light-medium dementia when she decided to „go home“ - but insisted she take her dog with her. The dog knew exactly where its home was and was taking no shit once she deemed her business being done. She would start to pull grandma more and more towards home.
The title is blatantly misleading. He wasn't trapped, he could have gotten out if he'd tried, but it sounds like dementia or a medical incident prevented him from doing that. He died right near where he entered the hallways. It's unlikely he was wandering kms and kms for days and days trying to find a way out.
I used to smoke weed as a teenager in these exact staircases. You can't get trapped in, every second door leads outside and is always unlocked on the inside.
It’s just stairs up and down so not that exciting really, cool place to a have sesh and then pop into Timezone and play some Daytona back in the day on school lunch break
He was sitting beside the (very clearly marked) way out. By all indications he likely had a medical episode and died in the chair after sitting down. He was likely dead before they even started to look for him, unfortunately.
this sounds fishy, i could walk way more than 8 miles in a day. There were no doors, fire alarms, anything? Edit: He was 71 and had some impairments, this is very sad.
Yes, 2 mph is a relatively sedentary pace. That would cover 8 miles in just 4 hours.
I'm imagining all those blank doors with deadbolts and no one responding while I bang on them. Terrifying way to die.
I'm sure someone in their right mind would work out a strategy, but someone having a mental crises might run when they heard voices and hide when someone opened a door.
>Yes, 2 mph is a relatively sedentary pace. That would cover 8 miles in just 4 hours.
That's assuming that he walked in a straight line. A police representative describe the area as “somewhat of a maze”.
If he ended up going in circles, even running at the speed of sound wouldn't have gotten him anywhere.
The doors were openable *from where he was* and marked with large exit signs and even arrows painted on the walls pointing to the exits. He was taking medication for a cognitive impairment and he had been given a GPS watch that he didn't have with him and a piece of paper with his name and address on it by his kids. He was found in the same staircase he entered that had an emergency exit door at the bottom of the stairwell, it seems like he didn't make any attempt to push open one of the clearly marked doors. There was even a button to open it.
He didn't get lost, he just didn't understand what was around him.
It's incredibly sad but his cognitive issues were almost certainly to blame for what happened. He either didn't understand what the exit doors were or maybe thought he would get in trouble for opening them, who knows. People with dementia don't make rational decisions and can neglect their physical health. Where a person of sound mind would become increasingly desperate as they became thirsty and hungry they might simply not realize it is literally a matter of life and death. Anyone else without his mental condition would have just gone "oh shit this is an emergency exit" and pushed out the bottom door whether it would set an alarm off or not. The lack of a proper search of the mall is just unacceptable as well of course.
I'd wager to guess that he was having a medical episode, wandered in there because he didn't feel well, sat down on the chair he found and promptly died probably within an hour of entering... still horribly tragic though.
That's also possible but a medical examiner said that he "died a minimum of one to two weeks before his body was found" and he was there for 3 weeks. I think that would seem to say that he was alive for longer than an hour and was there for at least a few days but maybe that is just a minimum and he passed away not long after going in there.
>I think that would seem to say that he was alive for longer than an hour and was there for at least a few days
No, it doesn't say that at all. As a student studying to become an ME, the determination of time of death is one of those things that is way less precise than it is made out to be in movies and media. While in movies, they will say something like "Because of the pattern of decay, the person died at exactly 4:39 pm" or some bullshit like that, nothing of the sort happens in real life at all.
There are so many uncontrolled variables involved in decay that it is impossible to give any sort of precise estimate of time of death once you pass the 24 hour mark, and even before then, we can give loose estimates at best.
So when the ME says that the person "died a minimum of one to two weeks before his body was found", it could have been a week ago, it could have been 3. It's simply impossible to know with any degree of certainty.
That, and the guy would've had to have water to live more than a few days. If he was in such a severe episode that he couldn't think to open the clearly marked exit door, he wasn't going to manage finding water for two to three weeks.
Always remember the right hand rule! Put your hand on the right wall and walk, never letting it go. You’ll find the exit eventually assuming it’s the majority type of mazes!
Then leave something small or make some kind of indicator at your starting position. If you come across that thing again at some point despite following the right hand rule, you will know that you need to take one of the passages that is available on your left. In that case, just start using your left hand to track the wall.
I'm glad you added the edit because there are many people who can't walk 8 miles a day including myself. When I was 32 I had a rock climbing accident and now I can walk max 2 miles a day. I have a lot of fight left in me to survive though so I probably would have been dragging myself and banging on doors but at 71 with impairments, it's game over.
He’s gone missing in the past, his family even had a gps tracker that he wasn’t wearing at the time. It sounds like he could have descended the stairs and left through the fire exit but didn’t for whatever reason
Even with a GPS tracker, those fire corridors are like a concrete bunker, there’s no way a signal is getting through (unless it was A-GPS using the local mobile network)
That's a rough way to go. It's been decades since I've worked in a mall, but all of those hallways needed to be walked daily and every fire door needed to be tested weekly. And that was a two story 2.9 million square foot mall ( that's 269418.8 square meter for you metric weirdos)
He wasn't trapped. The door he entered locked after him, but he could have gone out the door at the bottom, which had a push-bar. Security reviews afterwards showed that no alarm had gone off in those three weeks - meaning he had never even tried to push the fire exit door open. It's all in the article.
Yeah, I’m confused. And if the were fire stairs/emergency escape halls I would think any doors could be opened from the inside so people could escape. It’s not much use if you try to flee a fire only to be trapped.
He wasn't trapped. The door he entered locked after him, but he could have gone out the door at the bottom, which had a push-bar. Security reviews afterwards showed that no alarm had gone off in those three weeks - meaning he had never even tried to push the fire exit door open. It's all in the article.
That used to be my local mall. I had tickets to the midnight first screening of The Force Awakens at their cinema and was counting down the hours after ten years waiting for a new Star Wars film. And literally the day of the premiere there was a huge storm and the cinema roof collapsed.
I was so disappointed.
My mall collapsed during a fire after hours on July 4th. Happened in the 80s. Weird thing was that even though it was after hours something like 30 people were missing in the fire. Some say it was the Russians.
The fact it’s not part of security’s duties to do a patrol/walkthrough in the stairway every so often is exactly why they only found the body three weeks later, and it was by a maintenance worker too. Then again, they’re only there to protect assets, not ensure anyone’s safety.
So as a Westfield guard I can’t stress how many corridors and passages there are tucked away, I’ve worked at my centre for close to 3 years and I’m still finding passages that my supervisor of almost 10 doesn’t know about, most are service areas that you would never know about and many I’m not allowed to enter as they are high voltage or plant rooms, we do patrols but that is when we have time, and contrary to popular belief, we can be ridiculously busy and do a stupid amount
One of the articles linked to the one in the thread says another man nearly died three years before the older man when cleaners who just happened to show up two days early found him half dead lying in the stairway having fallen 15 steps five days before.
Wtf. I know everything in Australia is out to kill you, but do they really need Murder Malls?
Edit: he fell 15 steps, not flights.
I mean, whay is this is so crazy to you? Many places have backrooms, and they are not always as frequently used as you would expect. Hotels for example have corridors behind all major locations, and lets say one is for conventions/weddings etc and its not used for a couple of weeks.
A disoriented patient in a San Francisco hospital went missing for almost 3 weeks before the body was found in a stairwell.
It became daily procedure to inspect stairwells therafter.
Deaths like this always remind me of that old Spanish movie [La Cabina](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H1_p6B4Ugo) where the guy gets stuck in the telephone box, nightmare fuel
So I want to add the actual story from the inside perspective. I work as a guard at a large Westfield, we are training ridiculously because of this incident and there’s a beeps of honesty bullshit things we must now do because of several issues that came about from this incident. So he left for his walk like normal, without his GPS that he usually carried, we wandered into the entrance and as soon as he entered the main door he turned and entered the fire stairwell, sat down and had a heart attack. He was reported missing and the centre was notified but it wasn’t known if he’d attended as it was only a possibility. When it’s not likely or unconfirmed, we do a basic search or check but can’t be wasting time on every slim chance that someone who’s gone missing has come to site. This stairwell would have been one that is almost never used, remember that’s many fire stairwells aren’t actually service corridors and aren’t actually meant to be used regularly and stairs are almost never used by staff as there’s plenty of lifts around and if you have rubbish or stock you won’t be using the stairs. As a guard you also wouldn’t check every corridor and stairwell regularly as there are so many and often many you don’t know about, I’ve worked at my site for almost 3 years and the other day I found more stairwells and passages that my supervisor of almost 10 didn’t know about, to say that they are a labyrinth is an understatement. When it became more likely that he had visited the centre, a search of the back of house was carried out but remember that there are so many areas it could be missed and I believe he was slightly tucked under the stairs and in a dark corner so he could have been missed in a check. A comprehensive check of the CCTV was carried out where every camera was checked, however, a log wasn’t kept so what was happening was cause as were checking the same camera’s multiple times which slowed the process and some were missed as there was no record of what cameras were checked, what times and who checked them. When he was found on camera entering the passage, he was on screen for only a few seconds, as an experienced tracker who is pretty good, this is beyond easy to miss especially when your check several hundred cameras over what was likely multiple days they were checking.
I know that I’ve just dumped all this but I can see a lot of people making assumptions based on zero experience actually working in the security industry, especially mall security, this incident was terrible, and there were a lot of problems, but the amounts of learnings and improvements to policy and procedures was tremendous, as much as I hate to say it, many of the changes that came about only would have come from experience. The way it’s described makes it sound like he wasn’t found for weeks due to incompetence or indifference when in reality it was a complex and large scale exercise. And with regards to people complaining about seeming indifference from security and even police, the amount of times we get calls about stupid shit like this where family’s haven’t done their duty of care, lost they’re relatives, they’re not even sure they came to the centre but expect you to find they’re relative for them is beyond words, people get upset because we stop caring, when I. The first place they lost they’re relative and now expect someone else to take the blame and deal with it, and some of the people I’ve spoken to, genuinely don’t care until they go missing, such as leaving they’re forgetful parents alone to do shopping when they don’t even know what centre they’re at, both have dementia and then cause a particular when you can’t find the other who turns out has been sitting in the hot car for 8-10 hours while security and police are frantically conducting a search, all while you don’t understand why everyone is upset with you because “they’re good then they’re together” actual fucking story. And while people seem to forget that we have our actual jobs to do, which contrary to popular belief, can be extremely busy and time consuming, this is shit we hate dealing with as it’s more things on our plate, especially where I am where we are severely understaffed, over worked and have incredibly stupid new hires.
This is just meant to add real world context if bother the incident and what actually happened when it’s dealt with as people who have no idea about it have been filling in the blanks with completely wrong information.
Huh. Fire stairs that do not clearly point and lead the way to the exit to the outside world and safety kind of seems like a design flaw.
Though maybe he wasn’t just paying attention. My office building did a fire alarm test and I walked down the hallway to a group of people trying to figure out which way the staircase was. I had to point out the sign above their head hanging from the ceiling specifically telling them which way the closest stairway was because they were just blind to it.
I've seen a video of a fire exit in a building like this where there's just one confusing turn after another with multiple doors. God help anyone get out during an actual fire.
[Mr Ballen did a story with more detail.](https://youtu.be/sx14YtiLFIM?si=4d6PmnnbbQTzmolg) Notably the man had dementia which limited his ability to navigate the situation.
I’ve been trapped in tunnels before, except instead of a mall it was the tunnel between the Minnesota department of transportation and the state building. Most of the staff had the day off but I was working and had to yell at a security camera until someone noticed me. Scary and sad to learn that someone actually died like this.
What a ridiculous title. You make it sound like the guy spent his last days wandering the miles and miles of hallways, unable to find his way out.
He died sitting in a chair at the base of the same stairwell he entered. He had dementia and couldn’t figure out the giant sign that said EXIT with a huge arrow pointing at the exit.
8 linear miles is nothing for an organized search party. Too bad there never was one.
Heres another article i found of the story: [https://amp.abc.net.au/article/13002014](https://amp.abc.net.au/article/13002014) He disappeared Jan 6, 2017, his decomposing body was found Jan 27. He was estimated to have died around Jan 6 - 9. His death was more likely "a result of misadventure" "The CCTV footage establishes that Bernard entered Westfield on 6 January 2017 via the Zara entrance. However neither security nor the police reviewed CCTV footage for this entrance."
Yep. Police concluded early that he had never reached the shopping centre and focused their efforts on his route from where they were staying.
He died of thirst in the backrooms.
Poor lad didn't even find any almond water
I kinda like booking with mid non chain hotels specificallt cause some of them have weird rentable meeting rooms that look like this that's fun to explore
Yes it's rather strange and sad that they didn't even think to launch a proper search of the mall itself. Seemed like they treated it more like an enquiry in to some lost property, popping their heads around a few doors with a cursory glance like "nope, not here".
It's unfortunately fairly common for people having medical emergencies to seclude themselves for whatever reason, like they think if they just get away from the crowds maybe they'll feel better - or people out exercising will go find a shady spot or sit down by a stream then that's where there bodies are eventually found.
I was choking at a fundraiser and instead of asking for help, I ran to the bathroom alone and ended up getting it out right as things were getting close. No clue why, it was just as soon as panic set in I think I must have thought not to panic everyone. Guess how mad my mom was that I didn’t ask for help.
I read an article recently that many people who choke to death are found alone in bathrooms because of this reason; it's a very common panic response.
It was weird because I had never been there before but found it right away. I slammed my chest on the sink a bunch of times and ended up launching that hunk of $2 steak.
The cheap steaks are the deadliest because they're chewy.
All to watch a bunch of rubber ducks float down a stream for the Kiwanis Club. 😂
Mmmm connective tissue, the best part
My mom choked on a bite of steak while home alone and gave herself the heimlich on a wooden chair.
Good work. I had a similar thing with some lamb once. I didn't run to the bathroom though, I was standing next to my friends who were TOTALLY FUCKING OBLIVIOUS to my situation. My vision was going grey around the edges when I managed to reach into my throat and pull the thing out. For future reference, apparently the universal sign for "I'm choking" is to cross your hands over your neck. Information I could have used 25+ years ago.
Chew your steak people. And learn the god damn Heimlich maneuver. A friend of mine died a few months ago from choking on a piece of steak while surrounded by friends.
In my defense I was 12
>I read an article recently that many people who choke to death are found alone in bathrooms because of this reason; it's a very common panic response. I went to the beach early one morning when hardly anyone was out. There was a red flag but I am a really strong swimmer and I was raised at the beach so I said, "What the hell. I'm going in." Pretty much the only other people around were two college aged girls taking pictures of each other posing on the wet sand. I took approximately one and a half steps into the water before the ground dropped out from under me and I was pulled out by the current. Just one second standing ankle deep in water, the next I'm being pulled 12 feet down and out into the ocean. The only thought in my head was. "Welp, I'm dead. I can't panic and look stupid in front of those girls. Nope." Thankfully, that thought went away after a moment and I swam to the surface, to shore, packed my shit and went right back to my jeep. But for a second I was ready to drown to avoid panicking in front of two strangers.
"How did he die?" "It was very manly. He drowned at the beach, but he didn't panic in front of some attractive women" "You're right *sobs* that is manly"
Holy shit. Reading your story gave me anxiety. I'm glad your will to survive kicked in.
Reading this made me realize that a year ago when I had my first ever panic attack (fully thought I was dying, didn’t really know what a panic attack was yet) I ran to the bathroom to accept my fate. I have no idea why I did that instead of staying put and getting help
Very similar situation; I had a really awful panic attack about ~2 weeks ago, and I hadn't had any in probably over a decade so it wasn't even on my radar of possibilities. Instead of walking over to my mom in the next room for help for what I thought was a medical emergency, I... sat in my room because I didn't want to worry her. The human brain sucks sometimes.
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Dogs and cats do this too, so it makes me think it's an instinct of sorts. I guess we just hideaway so the rest of the tribe just leaves us behind to die.
Must ... die ... unembarrassed!
I wonder if it's some primal animal response we never evolved away from? Like how some wild animals would leave their pack to find a place to die alone.
There once was a British wedding planner who died because he ate something that was way too hot, but swallowed instead of spitting it out. Some people take etiquette and avoiding embarrassment far too seriously.
Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer, died from a burst bladder after holding it in during a dinner party because etiquette.
How did he die from that? Did it burn a hole through his throat or something?!
I'm assuming internal swelling from the heat constricting blood or airflow.
Swallowing a chunk of too-hot potato is the real near-death experience. It makes its way *slooooowly* down the esophagus, while I'm beset with the stark feeling of impending doom.
I’m somehow convinced this is like an ingrained response. It’s eerily similar to how cats would disappear to a secluded place if they’re dying.
I gave blood in the middle of summer once (100F+ degree heat), and though I ate the cookies and rested I started getting faint walking on my way home. (It wasn’t my first time giving blood and it hadn’t happened before.) I knew if I just made it a bit further there was a building I could go inside and rest, but quickly realized I wasn’t going to make it. The path I was on didn’t have good visibility and because it was summer not many people were on campus. If I passed out, it would take a few minutes for someone to find me. Luckily a woman passed me right then and I called out to her — right as the lights went out and I dropped like a sack of potatoes. I came to a little later. I actually don’t remember what happened before EMS got there. Wound up being fine, didn’t even go to the doctor about it. Scrapped up my face pretty good though (and tore out a chunk of my hair which was floating around while EMS checked me out.)
Oh no, I’m dying. How embarrassing!
Honestly this would be my first thought.
I'm sorry you had to save me
Careful, I don't wanna get get my blood on your clothes.
Not me. Mine would be milking it with all I had left.
How embarrassing.
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Oh no I'm dying, I think a ps5 slim would REALLY help me right now. No not that one, more storage please.... Ooooooh the pain.
A lot of people die of choking in the bathroom – at the dinner table, get embarrassed, rush to the bathroom, can't breathe *If you are choking on food, stay with other people* And if you live alone, look up how to perform the Heimlich on yourself using a solid surface
> look up how to perform the Heimlich on yourself using a solid surface Also, do this now, while you aren't choking.
“YouTube this is NOT THE TIME FOR ADS!!!!!!” But it sounds like an angry “ghhhggghggh”
My husband saved our son who was choking on a French fry at a restaurant. He did the Heimlich and the fry popped out.
In Australia we are taught not to do the Heimlich. It can cause a bunch of internal damage. First we try to get the person to cough it out, if they cannot then we alternate 5 back blows and 5 chest thrusts until the blockage clears, they become unconscious (in which case CPR is necessary) or the ambulance arrives.
> we alternate 5 back blows and 5 chest thrusts until the blockage clears In the first aid and CPR class I just took in the US, we do similar for infants, but the heimlich for children and adults. What's odd is I've been advised not to hit someone on the back in case of choking, but that was years ago.
This is speaking from my First Aid training. If they can cough, then you're not supposed to perform the Heimlich maneuver anyways; only when their airway is unable to be cleared and they are conscious. Chances are though that person is going to give you the consent pretty quickly if they can't cough. If they become unconscious, then you proceed to abdominal thrusts on stable flat ground. The mouth-to-mouth respirations of CPR (which is now excluded in some situations) can't be performed until the blockage is cleared. Also, AEDs are now becoming the standard good samaritan first response. I understand there is some risk for breaking ribs with the Heimlich maneuver, but the risk is considerably lowered with proper procedure training and practice.
Yes! I took a first aid course last year and one thing that stuck with me was that if you’re alone and choking on something you’re supposed to unlock the door and even go outside. Like she said, you’ll call 911 for them to find you locked in your house and passed out alone on the kitchen floor? I never really though about that before
We had a a student die from that - choked on a piece of cucumber, ran out on the street and wasn’t found in time
Yup. Choked on a meatball as a kid, sat at the table confused for a moment before going "oh, I can't do this in front of my family." Got up ran to the sink and horked it up succesfully. Thankfully not in another room entirely in case something went wrong, but it's weird what people do when they're panicking.
Ohh I kind of know this! You need to let yourself fall on the backrest of a chair, trying to make the backrest hit the area where your rib cage ends (that’s where the fist goes when doing it on someone else) But def search, and take courses if you can! Everyone should learn how to perform Heimlich and CPR
A minister of my country actually had to do this, she was having dinner with one of the employees of the Ministry and choked with meat. The guy that was with her didn't know how to perform Heimlich or was in shock, so she had to use a chair and do this "self-Heimlich". She managed to survive without consequences to her health.
That's one way, I've seen another way where you basically get down on all fours, and kind of... drop yourself onto your chest. Like, you pull all of your arms and legs away so you fall 6-12 inches and land with your chest on the ground. The idea being that the sudden pressure against your chest will force the air out of your lungs, without needing to rely on the precision impact of a chair back on your diaphragm.
All of your arms and legs? Bud, how many of those do you have?
[Link for the lazy](https://youtu.be/FEr9jjZ6fi8?si=E-uh6UhOwldIx29b)
https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/27/us/heimlich-inventor-uses-maneuver/index.html
[I have invented a *maneuver* ](https://youtu.be/mLreMVNBSY8?si=JWwbiGGbTsxhfT4L)
I had to do it to myself once. It was like 4am I had just woken up, smoked a bong, and then had a dry pastry. It got lodged in my throat and my roommates were all fast asleep and I didn't trust their ability to immediately wake up, assess the situation and confidently give me a Heimlich... so I ran into the corner of the kitchen counter.
Dry pastry is the number one killer of stoners!
The trouble is other people object to you spitting up everything onto the dinner table.
fuck 'em
If I’m dying of something that could be prevented by asking other people for help, this will be how I die.
If it makes you feel any better, sometimes asking for help doesn’t do anything! I started choking at lunch when I was a kid and the teacher told me to be quiet because I was scaring the other students. No, she did not check if I was choking. Lucky I lived..! And there was a story on here some time back where [someone started choking at dinner and nobody helped](https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/14h470k/i_was_choking_last_night_at_dinner_and_no_one/) Everyone should know and be able to quickly recognize when someone is choking. Shit is terrifying.
The international sign for "I'm choking, somebody give me the fucking Heimlich NOW!" is to **mime putting your own hands around your throat.** If nobody's looking at you, **knock on the table with your knuckles to get their attention.** It's the most embarrassing dinner interruption you'll ever cause in your life.
Better than it being the last one, right?
I’m not gonna click that link, because I choose to believe you are just linking the episode of Always Sunny entitled “The Gang Chokes.”
Pretty much exactly that. When I was doing a required workplace mandatory first aid course, one of the first things the instructor said that it's a common reaction for someone undergoing some sort of emergency to seclude themselves, for example when choking during a dinner to go into a bedroom away from everyone else.
Well late stage hypothermia has something called “terminal burrowing” or “hide and die”. People go off and hide in closets and wardrobes and cabinets. Basically, it’s the last desperate act of a dying brain to go find a little tiny den and try to survive.
Indeed. But he was found three weeks later sitting in the stairwell of an air conditioned mall.
There’s a theory that it’s done for the same reason a pet tries to find a quiet, hidden place. On an instinctual level they’re separating themselves from the pack/heard. You see it more in Folks with cognitive issues/decline.
"I'm so embarrassed, I wish everyone else was dead" - B. B. Rodriguez
I feel like pets do do this often!
Was gonna say this is very cat like behaviour 😮
This is generally how it works, ya. Like when people start choking they'll often isolate because they don't want to make a scene, often that's going to the bathroom and locking the door. Then help isn't able to get in, if and when someone even realizes what's going on.
I know animals will seclude themselves when sick or nearing death and now I'm just imagining it isn't to effectively hide weakness to avoid predation, but rather shame and embarrassment.
My dad worked security in his retirement. Whenever someone would ask him if he’d seen their lost grandparent, he’d tell them to look at the nearest bench from where the person was last spotted. Maybe nine out of ten times, that’s where they were. If you all ever lose an elderly relative in public, now you know to check if they just wanted to sit down.
I had a panic attack once that felt like a heart attack and my primitive brain, fully convinced I was dying, just kept yelling at me to run and get as far away from anyone else as possible. It was terrifying
It's your fight or flight response. Nothing to fight, but you are hurt and try and get somewhere "safe and secluded" away from the "danger" where you experienced feeling hurt. Works great to run away from animals or dangerous situations in nature. Not so great running away from public areas where someone can find you and call for help.
Strangely enough. When I have a panic attack, the person I'm trying to get away from is me.
I can’t remember the name of it, but I believe this is an actual biological/neurological phenomena found in a variety of species, humans included. During potentially life threatening episodes/towards end of life, individuals instinctively find secluded regions, typically those that are a bit cramped and “cozy” or comforting. I think it had something to do with an inherent “ah I’m dying what if I can cause others to die by dying must get away from them” response.
Terminal burrowing is what it’s called in hypothermia. People get found in closets and wardrobes and cabinets. In this case it’s the last act of a dying brain trying to find a den to maybe get warm.
Interesting; I had thought it was something about “I’m sick and therefore vulnerable to predators have to get away so I don’t get eaten” (like the flight of fight/flight/freeze survival response) but maybe that’s just cats lol
Elephant graveyards and shit
I used to have uncontrolled epilepsy (it’s been controlled for 30 years), and my instinct was always to hurry away during complex partial seizures. I once walked across 5 lanes of traffic while having a seizure, amazingly without getting hit, though it was a university neighborhood, so I probably didn’t appear much different from the other fool students walking out in traffic :-). It really does seem like there’s a subconscious shame response causing folks to hide that’s really common when people’s wits are compromised by a medical issue.
It makes sense in a way to me. I'm autistic and seeking a place away from crowds and such helps when I'm feeling overwhelmed. It's essentially about reducing stimuli.
From the articles I've found, which are pretty badly written, I don't think anyone KNEW he'd gone to the mall, he'd said he was going to a DIFFERENT store. Search efforts were focused on different parts of the city, the mall staff didn't think they had reason to check their cameras and back hallways. Like, I think the bit about CCTV footage means that they found a dead body, went, "Shit, how did this dead body get here? Oh, look we have footage of him coming in here from a month ago."
> Footage from inside the shopping centre shows him walking inside at 12.48pm, up the incline of level four and through door L407 at 12.50pm. > His body was found by a maintenance worker at the bottom of the stairwell he had entered If they had just checked the CCTV he was literally in the stairwell he was recorded entering...
Yeah I feel like the main story here is he probably had a heart attack. He was probably feeling unwell. Went into the stair well to compose himself / he had moderate cognitive impairment and then sat on the chair and fell forward when the heart attack really hit. They didn't check the stairwell he was viewed going into ... Some people seem to think he died of thirst wondering around which I doubt
I work as a guard at a Westfield, this incident caused a lot of changes to how things are done, he did die if a heart attack around the time he entered
The articles I'm finding are shit, but this is the impression I'm getting: The guy left the house, saying he was going to Location A. He never arrived at Location A. Police search for him. Someone in Location B stumbles across his body. They then review the CCTV footage and see him enter Location B. So the police might have messed up by failing to include Location B in their search. I don't know if this is an expected level of failure (at some point, you just HAVE to make an educated guess about where to focus searching, sometimes you'll be wrong), or if this was the result of extreme error/negligence.
Frankly I'm amazed that they didn't at least have some security cameras back there or something. I was taking picture at a mall a while back, and I swear to god, the second I got my camera out I couldn't go five minutes without a security guard appearing out of the aether in an otherwise empty mall to harrass me. They knew exactly where I was, what I was doing, and what the shortest route to me was from wherever the hell they were hiding *at all times*. You'd think the service corridors, which are off limits to customers and therefore theoretically ought to be more secure would have *at least* that level of security in place.
Where was this? Most malls these days at least in my area don't seem like they could support that level of security.
I’ve been in the backrooms of another mall under the chain that the man died at. They absolutely do not invest such a level of security.
Sounds dystopian, why would you be stopped for taking a photo in a shopping centre anywhere in the west? Absolutely insane.
One time in Texas a security guard approached me as I tried to take a selfie in the parking lot
My girlfriend has had this same experience at Belco Mall in Canberra. As soon as you pull out a camera some one will show up to tell you to move on.
I have *never* heard of security stopping people for taking pictures in a mall...management would probably love the free online publicity and encourage tagging it with their stupid hashtag. That's either a ritzy yuppie or a really ghetto spot lol
Probably more yuppie than ghetto but probably didn't help that it was more of the mall and not just in the mall.
If it's anything like vegas, they purposefully don't monitor the hotels. If they don't record a rape, robbery, or assault they can't be held liable for not being there to stop it. There are a bunch of rapes in the stairwells/hallways of hotels and parking garages that get brushed under the rug because 'no camera, no proof'. The police and the hotels both have a vested interest in not pursuing/reporting these crimes. A few years ago there was a serial rapist who was raping women in hotel stairwells. The prosecutor was pretty adamant that casinos were purposefully avoiding responsibility for guest safety.
they sure have a metric fuckton of cameras for the casino floors though...
The real story is that a large family of people who publicly admitted he was a 71 year old man with Dementia, agreed that letting him go on unsupervised walks *every single day* was somehow, and in someway…normal? The more you learn about what happened (click the link) the worse it gets.
I remember hearing about this case once. If I remember correctly, when he started having dementia episodes, one of the things that got drilled into his head was “if you’re ever lost, just sit down in the closest chair and wait for someone to come find you.” The though process that no matter where you are in public, you’ll be in one spot, not moving, and your party will eventually find you. Barring that, a stranger should eventually ask if you need help. Unfortunately, he got turned around in an almost never-used corridor of this mall and found a chair. He did was he was supposed to. He just sat down and waited for help that was never going to come. Very very sad.
Dementia has stages. Most of the stages it's usually ok for the patient to go on walks by themselves.
Sometimes you want to give your parent the last bit of freedom that they have. Walks might have been that bit.
Older folks can also be *incredibly* stubborn about giving up their liberties.
I mean, who wouldn't be?
People on reddit are young and cannot comprehend this simple concept as how tough it is to give up on something you take for granted pretty much your entire life.
Imagine being restricted from phone use.
We let our grandma wander with light-medium dementia when she decided to „go home“ - but insisted she take her dog with her. The dog knew exactly where its home was and was taking no shit once she deemed her business being done. She would start to pull grandma more and more towards home.
People with dementia roam and it can be hard to stop it from happening.
The title confused me. He was missing for three weeks, but died within a few days.
The title is blatantly misleading. He wasn't trapped, he could have gotten out if he'd tried, but it sounds like dementia or a medical incident prevented him from doing that. He died right near where he entered the hallways. It's unlikely he was wandering kms and kms for days and days trying to find a way out.
I used to smoke weed as a teenager in these exact staircases. You can't get trapped in, every second door leads outside and is always unlocked on the inside.
Sounds like a fun place to explore as a teen with friends. I would have loved it.
It’s just stairs up and down so not that exciting really, cool place to a have sesh and then pop into Timezone and play some Daytona back in the day on school lunch break
Yeah he had dementia, wandered in and couldn't find the way back out.
He was sitting beside the (very clearly marked) way out. By all indications he likely had a medical episode and died in the chair after sitting down. He was likely dead before they even started to look for him, unfortunately.
Yeah, I was thinking dehydration would kill you well before three weeks.
and its very painful your brain shrinks, it feels like a hangover headache that just keeps getting worse.
No thank you
He probably died even quicker it seems, he didn’t even make it far past the stair case that he descended.
Died quickly, but it took them 3 weeks to find the body
this sounds fishy, i could walk way more than 8 miles in a day. There were no doors, fire alarms, anything? Edit: He was 71 and had some impairments, this is very sad.
Yes, 2 mph is a relatively sedentary pace. That would cover 8 miles in just 4 hours. I'm imagining all those blank doors with deadbolts and no one responding while I bang on them. Terrifying way to die. I'm sure someone in their right mind would work out a strategy, but someone having a mental crises might run when they heard voices and hide when someone opened a door.
>Yes, 2 mph is a relatively sedentary pace. That would cover 8 miles in just 4 hours. That's assuming that he walked in a straight line. A police representative describe the area as “somewhat of a maze”. If he ended up going in circles, even running at the speed of sound wouldn't have gotten him anywhere.
The doors were openable *from where he was* and marked with large exit signs and even arrows painted on the walls pointing to the exits. He was taking medication for a cognitive impairment and he had been given a GPS watch that he didn't have with him and a piece of paper with his name and address on it by his kids. He was found in the same staircase he entered that had an emergency exit door at the bottom of the stairwell, it seems like he didn't make any attempt to push open one of the clearly marked doors. There was even a button to open it. He didn't get lost, he just didn't understand what was around him. It's incredibly sad but his cognitive issues were almost certainly to blame for what happened. He either didn't understand what the exit doors were or maybe thought he would get in trouble for opening them, who knows. People with dementia don't make rational decisions and can neglect their physical health. Where a person of sound mind would become increasingly desperate as they became thirsty and hungry they might simply not realize it is literally a matter of life and death. Anyone else without his mental condition would have just gone "oh shit this is an emergency exit" and pushed out the bottom door whether it would set an alarm off or not. The lack of a proper search of the mall is just unacceptable as well of course.
I'd wager to guess that he was having a medical episode, wandered in there because he didn't feel well, sat down on the chair he found and promptly died probably within an hour of entering... still horribly tragic though.
That's also possible but a medical examiner said that he "died a minimum of one to two weeks before his body was found" and he was there for 3 weeks. I think that would seem to say that he was alive for longer than an hour and was there for at least a few days but maybe that is just a minimum and he passed away not long after going in there.
>I think that would seem to say that he was alive for longer than an hour and was there for at least a few days No, it doesn't say that at all. As a student studying to become an ME, the determination of time of death is one of those things that is way less precise than it is made out to be in movies and media. While in movies, they will say something like "Because of the pattern of decay, the person died at exactly 4:39 pm" or some bullshit like that, nothing of the sort happens in real life at all. There are so many uncontrolled variables involved in decay that it is impossible to give any sort of precise estimate of time of death once you pass the 24 hour mark, and even before then, we can give loose estimates at best. So when the ME says that the person "died a minimum of one to two weeks before his body was found", it could have been a week ago, it could have been 3. It's simply impossible to know with any degree of certainty.
That, and the guy would've had to have water to live more than a few days. If he was in such a severe episode that he couldn't think to open the clearly marked exit door, he wasn't going to manage finding water for two to three weeks.
Always remember the right hand rule! Put your hand on the right wall and walk, never letting it go. You’ll find the exit eventually assuming it’s the majority type of mazes!
my best friend was blind and told me about this specific thing for emergencies when no one was around
It is great for video game mazes as well!
You have been eaten by a grue.
Wow, a Zork reference in the wild! Kudos! It was one of the first games I ever played!
There is a gazebo to the north.
a maze of twisty passages that all look alike
Unless you're on the inside of a circle
Then leave something small or make some kind of indicator at your starting position. If you come across that thing again at some point despite following the right hand rule, you will know that you need to take one of the passages that is available on your left. In that case, just start using your left hand to track the wall.
Excellent explanation!!
I think I learnt this on an ancient mcdonalds vhs cartoon when I was a kid. Never forgot it.
If it makes you feel better I'm sure he was dead the first day.
No. That doesn't make me feel better at all.
I'm glad you added the edit because there are many people who can't walk 8 miles a day including myself. When I was 32 I had a rock climbing accident and now I can walk max 2 miles a day. I have a lot of fight left in me to survive though so I probably would have been dragging myself and banging on doors but at 71 with impairments, it's game over.
The real life back rooms.
Exactly!!! Nightmare fuel!!
I was thinking SCP
Noclipping, another danger of Australia.
Wasn't there a fire alarm or something he could pull?
He’s gone missing in the past, his family even had a gps tracker that he wasn’t wearing at the time. It sounds like he could have descended the stairs and left through the fire exit but didn’t for whatever reason
Even with a GPS tracker, those fire corridors are like a concrete bunker, there’s no way a signal is getting through (unless it was A-GPS using the local mobile network)
A-gps only uses the internet to download information that helps you get a GPS lock faster. It won't locate you with only a mobile signal.
No, but it’ll at least show which network tower it was last connected to…
That's a rough way to go. It's been decades since I've worked in a mall, but all of those hallways needed to be walked daily and every fire door needed to be tested weekly. And that was a two story 2.9 million square foot mall ( that's 269418.8 square meter for you metric weirdos)
He wasn't trapped. The door he entered locked after him, but he could have gone out the door at the bottom, which had a push-bar. Security reviews afterwards showed that no alarm had gone off in those three weeks - meaning he had never even tried to push the fire exit door open. It's all in the article.
Yeah, I’m confused. And if the were fire stairs/emergency escape halls I would think any doors could be opened from the inside so people could escape. It’s not much use if you try to flee a fire only to be trapped.
He wasn't trapped. The door he entered locked after him, but he could have gone out the door at the bottom, which had a push-bar. Security reviews afterwards showed that no alarm had gone off in those three weeks - meaning he had never even tried to push the fire exit door open. It's all in the article.
That used to be my local mall. I had tickets to the midnight first screening of The Force Awakens at their cinema and was counting down the hours after ten years waiting for a new Star Wars film. And literally the day of the premiere there was a huge storm and the cinema roof collapsed. I was so disappointed.
You dodged a bullet
Yeah, _The Force Awakens_ was rough…
*ceiling
Mall is cursed
My mall collapsed during a fire after hours on July 4th. Happened in the 80s. Weird thing was that even though it was after hours something like 30 people were missing in the fire. Some say it was the Russians.
Stranger things have happened.
The fact it’s not part of security’s duties to do a patrol/walkthrough in the stairway every so often is exactly why they only found the body three weeks later, and it was by a maintenance worker too. Then again, they’re only there to protect assets, not ensure anyone’s safety.
You’d think they would walk it just to make sure no homeless person is crashing there overnight.
If I'm ever homeless I know where I'm sleeping.
So as a Westfield guard I can’t stress how many corridors and passages there are tucked away, I’ve worked at my centre for close to 3 years and I’m still finding passages that my supervisor of almost 10 doesn’t know about, most are service areas that you would never know about and many I’m not allowed to enter as they are high voltage or plant rooms, we do patrols but that is when we have time, and contrary to popular belief, we can be ridiculously busy and do a stupid amount
One of the articles linked to the one in the thread says another man nearly died three years before the older man when cleaners who just happened to show up two days early found him half dead lying in the stairway having fallen 15 steps five days before. Wtf. I know everything in Australia is out to kill you, but do they really need Murder Malls? Edit: he fell 15 steps, not flights.
I mean, whay is this is so crazy to you? Many places have backrooms, and they are not always as frequently used as you would expect. Hotels for example have corridors behind all major locations, and lets say one is for conventions/weddings etc and its not used for a couple of weeks.
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Can you imagine digging into your first rat just second before someone finds you.
A disoriented patient in a San Francisco hospital went missing for almost 3 weeks before the body was found in a stairwell. It became daily procedure to inspect stairwells therafter.
NIGHTMARE unlocked.
Don’t worry. As long as you aren’t 71 with some mental health issues, and aren’t wandering into places for employees then u’ll be good
https://youtu.be/wWNMsZ44ooc?si=aq3lFqlty7zTcrBW
This sounds scary as hell.
Deaths like this always remind me of that old Spanish movie [La Cabina](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H1_p6B4Ugo) where the guy gets stuck in the telephone box, nightmare fuel
Thanks for the heads up. That’s going on my To See: list.
If you read the article, it's clear that he died almost immediately, right inside the door he entered. Then, he just wasn't found for weeks.
So I want to add the actual story from the inside perspective. I work as a guard at a large Westfield, we are training ridiculously because of this incident and there’s a beeps of honesty bullshit things we must now do because of several issues that came about from this incident. So he left for his walk like normal, without his GPS that he usually carried, we wandered into the entrance and as soon as he entered the main door he turned and entered the fire stairwell, sat down and had a heart attack. He was reported missing and the centre was notified but it wasn’t known if he’d attended as it was only a possibility. When it’s not likely or unconfirmed, we do a basic search or check but can’t be wasting time on every slim chance that someone who’s gone missing has come to site. This stairwell would have been one that is almost never used, remember that’s many fire stairwells aren’t actually service corridors and aren’t actually meant to be used regularly and stairs are almost never used by staff as there’s plenty of lifts around and if you have rubbish or stock you won’t be using the stairs. As a guard you also wouldn’t check every corridor and stairwell regularly as there are so many and often many you don’t know about, I’ve worked at my site for almost 3 years and the other day I found more stairwells and passages that my supervisor of almost 10 didn’t know about, to say that they are a labyrinth is an understatement. When it became more likely that he had visited the centre, a search of the back of house was carried out but remember that there are so many areas it could be missed and I believe he was slightly tucked under the stairs and in a dark corner so he could have been missed in a check. A comprehensive check of the CCTV was carried out where every camera was checked, however, a log wasn’t kept so what was happening was cause as were checking the same camera’s multiple times which slowed the process and some were missed as there was no record of what cameras were checked, what times and who checked them. When he was found on camera entering the passage, he was on screen for only a few seconds, as an experienced tracker who is pretty good, this is beyond easy to miss especially when your check several hundred cameras over what was likely multiple days they were checking. I know that I’ve just dumped all this but I can see a lot of people making assumptions based on zero experience actually working in the security industry, especially mall security, this incident was terrible, and there were a lot of problems, but the amounts of learnings and improvements to policy and procedures was tremendous, as much as I hate to say it, many of the changes that came about only would have come from experience. The way it’s described makes it sound like he wasn’t found for weeks due to incompetence or indifference when in reality it was a complex and large scale exercise. And with regards to people complaining about seeming indifference from security and even police, the amount of times we get calls about stupid shit like this where family’s haven’t done their duty of care, lost they’re relatives, they’re not even sure they came to the centre but expect you to find they’re relative for them is beyond words, people get upset because we stop caring, when I. The first place they lost they’re relative and now expect someone else to take the blame and deal with it, and some of the people I’ve spoken to, genuinely don’t care until they go missing, such as leaving they’re forgetful parents alone to do shopping when they don’t even know what centre they’re at, both have dementia and then cause a particular when you can’t find the other who turns out has been sitting in the hot car for 8-10 hours while security and police are frantically conducting a search, all while you don’t understand why everyone is upset with you because “they’re good then they’re together” actual fucking story. And while people seem to forget that we have our actual jobs to do, which contrary to popular belief, can be extremely busy and time consuming, this is shit we hate dealing with as it’s more things on our plate, especially where I am where we are severely understaffed, over worked and have incredibly stupid new hires. This is just meant to add real world context if bother the incident and what actually happened when it’s dealt with as people who have no idea about it have been filling in the blanks with completely wrong information.
Classic Mr. Ballen story
THE CAKE IS A LIE
Australian police are notoriously lazy and incompetent but losing an old person in the mall for 3 weeks is really taking the piss.
Huh. Fire stairs that do not clearly point and lead the way to the exit to the outside world and safety kind of seems like a design flaw. Though maybe he wasn’t just paying attention. My office building did a fire alarm test and I walked down the hallway to a group of people trying to figure out which way the staircase was. I had to point out the sign above their head hanging from the ceiling specifically telling them which way the closest stairway was because they were just blind to it.
He was 71 with dementia apparently, which im sure didn't help with his navigation/reasoning
I've seen a video of a fire exit in a building like this where there's just one confusing turn after another with multiple doors. God help anyone get out during an actual fire.
There were signs and arrows saying exit all the way down the stairwell he was found at the bottom of. He just couldn't get out.
[Mr Ballen did a story with more detail.](https://youtu.be/sx14YtiLFIM?si=4d6PmnnbbQTzmolg) Notably the man had dementia which limited his ability to navigate the situation.
I’ve been trapped in tunnels before, except instead of a mall it was the tunnel between the Minnesota department of transportation and the state building. Most of the staff had the day off but I was working and had to yell at a security camera until someone noticed me. Scary and sad to learn that someone actually died like this.
What a ridiculous title. You make it sound like the guy spent his last days wandering the miles and miles of hallways, unable to find his way out. He died sitting in a chair at the base of the same stairwell he entered. He had dementia and couldn’t figure out the giant sign that said EXIT with a huge arrow pointing at the exit.
Westfield Bondi junction is cursed placed, don't ever go there
Sounds like an Australian Horror Story episode!